As part of its mission to be more transparent, the Warren County R-III School District has decided to give the community more access to its inner operations.

R-III recently unveiled the use of an online “financial dashboard,” which permits the public to see the district’s management of funds in real time. The program was designed and is maintained by Superintendent Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith.

“We’re really trying to be as transparent about everything as possible,” said Klinginsmith. “Here are the books. If you want to see where we’re spending money, here it is. We’re not hiding anything from anybody.”

He says the move came in part as a result of feedback surrounding both the district’s attempt to pass Prop W to raise teacher salaries, and the cuts approved last school year. Patrons seemed unclear or questioned R-III’s use of funding.

“As we were going through our budget, we got a little bit of feedback that we were not being transparent,” said Klinginsmith. “We asked, ‘how can we be even more transparent?’ We were able to build this, publish it and make it go.”

The dashboard was designed through a program from Tyler Technologies called Pulse and allows the public to view every aspect of the district’s financial operations. On the home page visitors can view the operational fund balance and monthly charts for different categories spanning over the past three years.

“This basically gives the public access to view all the financial accounts I have access to in our system,” said Klinginsmith. “There are some meters showing how close we are in spending more or less of the budget. On the left side you can see all the revenue and expense accounts in the district.”

Patrons can search vendors as well as see the salary of any employee in the district. Charts help break down the use of funding to help the community better understand where money is being allocated. 

“Most of it’s going into salaries,” said Klinginsmith. “You can go on there and see how much we’ve been paying each person over the past three years.”

While the public cannot edit the data, it is possible to pull files to Excel for further exploration. Klinginsmith is hopeful this will instill confidence in the community when it comes to feeling included in the district’s operations and eliminate any barriers that may exist from lack of disclosure. 

“It’s the public’s money and we’re in charge of managing it,” added Klinginsmith. “We want everyone to see where it’s going and how we’re spending it.”

The financial dashboard can be accessed by going to the district’s website at warrencor3.org and selecting the “finance” option under the “departments” tab on the home page.